Google drive, a stress relieving, simple, and interactive online tool

One thing always pops out in my head whenever I think of some way to make my teaching more appropriate to today’s learners, or what we should call it the digital learners. Make it interactive. It may be hard for teachers to make their teaching the more interactive as it can be, especially here in Quebec where the reality is that we often get only one computer for the whole class and very few amount of time per week at the computer lab. This is very unfortunate since using computers can be very beneficial. However, there some options in these cases. Indeed, there are programs such as Google drive, which allows teachers to make the class interactive up to outside the classroom.

Indeed, it is most likely that the majority student will have an access to Internet form home. Those who don’t will be given access at school since they will be a few. Having the students use Google drive has so many possibilities, for us teacher as well as for the students. Google drive is an online software which can be used to store any files and share any files. It particularity is that these files can be accessed from any computer. Also, one who shares a document can choose who they allow to have access to the document.

Its main benefit? Everything is being saved in one place as one document gradually as the teacher or the students are modifying it. YES this IS magical.

I, myself, I am a bit worried about having the responsibility of having to deal with twenty files at the time, as it happens more often than not that I delete by accident my own twelve page essays. I do not imagine how bad it would be to delete one of my student’s work…by accident. Hence, to me, Google Drive is a saviour. Google Drive, is a very reliable software which will register any change that is made to the document, and you can access the historic of changes to see when and what has been changed.

In addition to being a good back up software, it makes any assignment time saving. Indeed, it allows the students to share their assignments online with the teacher and having the teacher add comments to it, without using e-mail. As a result, us teachers do not have to e-mail back and forth every student. This again will keep any document from getting lost in the cloud, and any teacher to experience e-mail overload!

Google drive also makes team project a LOT easier. Indeed, during team projects, students can share a file and share documents, which every member of the team can have access to and modify if they want. Moreover, it allows each team member to have access to the documents whenever they one, and wherever they want. Without Google drive, the documents would be spread among the team member and so when one member of the team is missing, the student cannot work. With Google drive, every document is stored on one place and the student can access it without any problem. As mentioned earlier, team project is also a situation in which it is likely that one of the students will lose an important document. Here again, Google drive provides a reinsurance that no document gets lost.

Out of its numerous benefits, I mentioned the ones that stands out as most life changing to me. Google drive really does have a great effect in the educational field. I believe it makes the life of teachers so much simpler and it is a tool to which teachers can rely on. No need to worry about the computer crashing the night before the submission of an assignment. The assignment is accessible from any computer, not only the one to which the assignment was last modified.